Quote :

"The KIDS are fine, but their PARENTS ... well, that's another matter Journal Graphic by Jeremy Boyd JOURNAL EDITORIAL STAFF THE WASHINGTON POST It is the prerogative of every generation of graybeards to look down the age ladder and accuse today's young of sloth, greed, selfishness -- and stupidity. We hear daily jeremiads from baby boomers who wonder how kids who'd rather listen to Linkin Park and play 'Grand Theft Auto III' than solve equations or read books can possibly grow up to become leaders of the world's superpower. The recent publication of The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerlein of Emory University epitomizes the genre. His subtitle -- 'How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future' -- says it all. Generational putdowns, Bauerlein's included, are typically long on attitude and short on facts. But the underlying question is worth pursuing: If the data are objectively assessed, which age-slice of today's working-age adults really does deserve to be called the dumbest generation? The answer may surprise you. No, it's not today's college-age kids, nor even today's family-starting 30-somethings. And no, it's not the 60-year-olds who once grooved at Woodstock. Instead, it's Americans in their 40s, especially their late 40s -- those born from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s. They straddle the boundary line between last-wave boomers and first-wave Generation Xers. The political consultant Jonathan Pontell labels them 'Generation Jones.' Whatever you call them (I'll just call them early Xers), the numbers are clear: Compared with every other birth cohort, they have performed the worst on standardized exams, acquired the fewest educational degrees and been the least attracted to professional careers. In a word, they're the dumbest. Obviously, we're talking averages. No one would apply the word 'dumb' to Barack Obama (born in 1961) or Timothy Geithner, his nominee for secretary of the Treasury (born in the same month). Yet the president-elect himself has written eloquently about how hard it was for him and his peers to obtain a serious education during their dazed-and-confused teen years. Like it or not, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (born in 1964), who stumbled over basic civics facts during her vice presidential run, is more representative of this group. Early Xers are the least bookish CEOs and legislators the United States has seen in a long while. They prefer sound bites over seminars, video clips over articles, street smarts over lofty diplomas. They are impatient with syntax and punctuation and citations -- and all the other brainy stuff they were never taught. Want proof? Let's start with the long-term results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which is housed within the U.S. Department of Education. Considered the gold standard in assessing K-12 students, the NAEP has been in continuous operation for decades. Here's the bottom line: On both the reading and the math tests, and at all three tested ages (9, 13 and 17), the lowest-ever scores in the history of the NAEP were recorded by children born between 1961 and 1965. The same pattern shows up in SAT scores. The SAT reached its all-time high in 1963, when it tested the 1946 birth cohort (including such notables as Gilda Radner and Oliver Stone). Then it fell steeply for 17 straight years, hitting its all-time low in 1980, when it tested the 1963 cohort (Mike Myers, Quentin Tarantino). Ever since, the SAT has been gradually if haltingly on the rise, paralleling improvements in the NAEP. In 2005, teens born in 1988 scored better on the combined SAT than any teens born since 1956 -- and better on the math SAT than any teens born since 1951. These numbers make the recent rise in SAT scores by the new Millennial generation seem even more impressive -- and the early Xer low even more disappointing. With a lot more kids getting higher scores, the average SAT scores of Ivy League undergrads have jumped since the late 1970s -- from 1230 to 1425 at the University of Pennsylvania, for example. Average scores for nearly all graduate exams have also been rising since the early 1990s, including the GRE, the LSAT, the GMAT and the MCAT. Now let's turn to education and career outcomes. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Americans born from 1958 to 1962 have the highest share that has never completed high school among all age brackets between 25 and 60. They also have the lowest share with a four-year college degree among all age brackets between 30 and 60, and they're tied for lowest in graduate degrees. Pushed by their passion for enlightenment (and by their fear of being drafted for Vietnam), first-wave baby boomers became obsessive degree achievers. That drive dropped off sharply during the next 10 or 15 years. Less-degreed than their elders, early Xers represent an anomalous back-step in educational progress. Once early Xers entered the labor force in the 1980s, the Bureau of Labor Statistics noticed something else: For the first time in decades, the share of young adults entering professions such as law, medicine and accounting began to drop. Around the same time, economists began to worry about the stagnation of median income and the decline of household assets among Americans in their 20s. Today, they're worrying about the economic stagnation of Americans in their 40s. So what explains the smartness deficit (and the related income gap) that has tracked these early Xers throughout their lives? Some say it's demographic pressure. Early Xers were born into large families at the tail end of the baby boom, with a relatively large share of higher-order siblings (just as first-wave boomers have a relatively large share of first-borns). As they grew up, they got crowded out in the competition for parental attention, good teachers and good colleges. Later on, by the 1980s, they arrived too late to enter the most lucrative professions and the cushiest corporations, by now glutted with boomer yuppies. Their only alternative was to pioneer the pragmatic, free-agent, low-credential lifestyle for which Generation X has since become famous. Yet sheer numbers aren't the whole story. The early Xers' location in history also plays a large role. Quite simply, they were children at a uniquely unfavorable moment -- a time when the divorce rate accelerated, when the media image of children turned demonic and when the 'latch-key' lesson for kids stressed self-reliance rather than trust in others. By the time they entered middle and high school, classrooms were opened, standards were lowered, and supervision had disappeared. Compared with earlier- or later-born students at the same age, these kids were assigned less homework, watched more TV and took more drugs. Most early Xers know the score. Graduating (or not) from school in the early 1980s, they saw themselves billboarded as a bad example by blue-ribbon commissions eager to reform the system for the next generation, the Millennials. Angling for promotions in the early 1990s, they got busy with self-help guides (yes, those 'For Dummies' books) to learn all the subjects they were never taught the first time around. And today, as midlife parents, they have become ultra-protective of their own teenage kids and ultra-demanding of their kids' schools, as if to make double-certain it won't happen again. Does America need to worry that this group is taking over as our national leaders? Probably not. Early Xers have certain strengths that many more learned people lack: They're practical and resilient, they handle risk well, and they know how to improvise when even the experts don't know the answer. As the global economy craters, they won't keep leafing through a textbook. They may be a little rough around the edges, but their style usually gets the job done. Just don't tell the early Xers that today's youth are the dumbest generation. Not only is that jibe factually untrue, it also calls into question all the family sacrifices the early Xers are now making on behalf of these youth. Let Generation Jones keep the 'dumbest' label. They know it fits, and they're tough enough to take it."

http://www2.journalnow.com/content/2008/dec/21/the-dumbest-generation-the-kids-are-fine-but-their/opinion/

I like it.

12/22/2008 6:00:57 PM

paging hooksaw

cuz you know he's gonna be all

12/22/2008 7:09:21 PM

Is hooksaw that old? I figured he's in his mid-to-late 30's.

12/22/2008 7:28:45 PM

I think he's in his early 40s.

I don't think anyone that posts here regularly is in their late 40s.

12/22/2008 7:41:09 PM

^^ no, that would be me

^ I peg him to have been born in 1965 or 66. so comments on the relative stupidity of "Generation Jones" applies to his crowd.

I'm smack in the middle of Gen X, myself, so I feel no anger over the above article.




[Edited on December 22, 2008 at 8:12 PM. Reason : ]

12/22/2008 8:09:41 PM

Well being a few years older than Obama, I'm in this group.

I do feel caught in between generations sometimes. Older boomers seem at times like righteous know-it-alls (even though I'm guilty of this at times) while those younger seem like scrappy slackers ( of which I often feel a compatriot- I love GTA-IV).

Looking back on my college years, we didn't take much of anything very seriously. We used our Student Association money to buy thousands of plastic pink flamingos and built a replica of the Statue of Liberty sticking out of frozen Lake Mendota.

I would agree with this assessment pretty much:

Quote :

"They're practical and resilient, they handle risk well, and they know how to improvise when even the experts don't know the answer. As the global economy craters, they won't keep leafing through a textbook. They may be a little rough around the edges, but their style usually gets the job done."

Hopefully these same traits will help Pres. Obama as he handles the economic mess left by older boomers.

[Edited on December 22, 2008 at 9:49 PM. Reason : .]

[Edited on December 22, 2008 at 9:49 PM. Reason : ..]

12/22/2008 9:48:33 PM

Quote :

"Well being a few years older than Obama, I'm in this group."

You're older than Obama?

12/22/2008 10:05:27 PM

12/22/2008 10:12:46 PM

And I thought this thread would be about Obama winning from the youth vote.

12/22/2008 10:51:51 PM

... says the guy who argues for theocracy

12/22/2008 10:55:30 PM

Quote :

"EarthDogg Well being a few years older than Obama, I'm in this group. ... we built a replica of the Statue of Liberty sticking out of frozen Lake Mendota"

Obama is 47 so that makes you about 50 -- and you went to Univ of Wisconsin.

how, exactly, did you wind up on T-Dub? just curious.






[Edited on December 23, 2008 at 1:02 AM. Reason : ]

12/23/2008 12:57:44 AM

Hahaha, he was introduced by some employees.

When I went to apply at his place, one of the questions in the interview was, "So, correct me if I'm wrong, but you're GrumpyGOP, aren't you?"

I got nervous and said, "Uh...no."

EarthDogg grins and says, "OK, well, in that case, I'm not EarthDogg, and the girl working in the other room isn't [such-and-such]"

I'm always hesitant to reveal the actual location for fear that someone might go mess with his shit, though I suppose if someone were really determined they could probably piece it together.

12/23/2008 1:21:00 AM

ahahah

12/23/2008 2:05:52 AM

Quote :

" DID NOT READ "

12/23/2008 2:13:08 AM

well how positively astounding of you. thanks for taking the extra effort to let us know that in your 48 point font.

i think i can say that we're all profoundly impressed by your abilities.

12/23/2008 3:21:59 AM

Crede, this. . .

message_topic.aspx?topic=502096&page=1

. . .is my "Millennials" thread--have you two met? You really should get acquainted. Here's a sampling:

The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30)

http://www.amazon.com/Dumbest-Generation-Stupefies-Americans-Jeopardizes/dp/1585426393

The Young Know Caroline's a Kennedy, but Which One?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/nyregion/21caroline.html

12/23/2008 10:11:19 AM

Quote :

" It is the prerogative of every generation of graybeards to look down the age ladder and accuse today's young of sloth, greed, selfishness -- and stupidity. ... The recent publication of [Bauerlein's] The Dumbest Generation 'How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future' says it all. Generational putdowns, Bauerlein's included, are typically long on attitude and short on facts. But the underlying question is worth pursuing: If the data are objectively assessed, which age-slice of today's working-age adults really does deserve to be called the dumbest generation?"

so which is the dumbest generation?

apparently by every meaningful metric, it's your generation, hooksaw. you know, the greybeards born in the mid-sixties.

Up until just this past week, no one cared who Caroline Kennedy was, or what her pedigree looked like. what, please tell us, has she ever done publicly that's noteworthy? nothing. Tell us, why should we care who your treasured icons from the Sixties are?

Look, as much as you want to assign a value to all that old pop-culture trivia rattling in your brain, generational intelligence is not defined by knowing details of Andy Warhol and Jackie O and Elizabeth Taylor .... they're old news. Life has moved on. Let them go. Get with the 21st Century.

Save your astounding intellect for Trivial Pursuit Night.





[Edited on December 23, 2008 at 11:47 AM. Reason : ]

12/23/2008 11:39:43 AM

Wrong--as usual, schmoe.

Kennedy Brand Leaves Cuomo Feeling Stymied
By DANNY HAKIM and RAYMOND HERNANDEZ
Published: December 19, 2008

Quote :

"Ms. Kennedy ended up on the cable television networks, in national newspapers and on blogs everywhere. Mr. Cuomo got a story in The Buffalo News."

Quote :

"That, friends say, has left Mr. Cuomo feeling outfoxed and frustrated. 'It's driving him crazy,' said one confidant of Mr. Cuomo's, who spoke to the attorney general about the Senate seat this week. 'He's boxed in. He can't do anything except fume, and he is fuming.'"

Quote :

"Meanwhile, some of the state's most powerful labor groups say that unless they receive a signal from Mr. Cuomo, they are moving to openly endorse the daughter of the late president and niece of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a longtime ally of the unions."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/20/nyregion/20cuomo.html



Caroline who? LOL! She's, like, [OLD] and stuff. Where's my iPod?

12/23/2008 11:47:06 AM

Quote :

" When I went to apply at his place, one of the questions in the interview was, "So, correct me if I'm wrong, but you're GrumpyGOP, aren't you?" I got nervous and said, "Uh...no." "

haha

DId he pronounce your name "Grumpy G-O-P" or did he say "gop" like "wop"?

In my head, i always say it as "grumpygawp"

Could you imagine what you'd be thinking though if you WEREN'T GrumpyGOP? you'd be a little freaked out I imagine...

[Edited on December 23, 2008 at 11:49 AM. Reason : ]

12/23/2008 11:48:59 AM

yeah, okay, thanks for proving nothing.

now go complain about them meddling kids and their iPods, mmkay?

12/23/2008 11:49:21 AM

^ No, I actually proved my PWNT--yet again.

12/23/2008 11:51:31 AM

find out whatever generation voted more for Obama and Franken and that will be the dumbest generation.

12/23/2008 12:02:22 PM

^ IIRC, the only age demo Obama didn't win was people 55+ years or older

12/23/2008 12:19:50 PM

Quote :

"DId he pronounce your name "Grumpy G-O-P" or did he say "gop" like "wop"?"

Haha, he did G-O-P.

What made the whole situation really awkward is that just a few days before in the Soap Box I had told EarthDogg to "eat a dick and learn how to read." Still, in spite of all that, I was able to get the job.

There's actually been a few wolfwebbers worked there, now that I think about it, though EarthDogg and I are the only ones in Soap Box that I know of.

Quote :

"Could you imagine what you'd be thinking though if you WEREN'T GrumpyGOP?"

I'd have been freaked out, but at that point I was so desperate for work that I was, among other things, applying for a job I knew I would be terrible at and. My boss being insane and calling me random names would not have been enough on top of all that to get me to leave.

To be fair, EarthDogg never actually fired me, long after the point where he should have. I have always credited this to the fact that I was the only one in the entire establishment who would talk to him when he went on a crazy libertarian rant.

12/23/2008 2:00:18 PM

Quote :

"I was the only one in the entire establishment who would talk to him when he went on a crazy libertarian rant."

..and I 'ppreciate that. Grumpy had the best stories and his tounge-in-cheek comments were classic. It was like having your own P.J. O'Rourke around.

12/23/2008 10:53:10 PM

I absolutely agree we (humans, Americans) are getting dumber by generation.

I, however, know I have nothing to do with it, and should I have children, will rear them in the classic ways of discipline, education, and no fucking video games and Celeb gossip.

[Edited on December 23, 2008 at 11:04 PM. Reason : asdfasdfas]

12/23/2008 11:04:42 PM

^I disagree that we are getting dumber. A hundred years ago, the average person was pretty uneducated.

Sure, they got classical discipline in that they got the shit kicked out of them regularly and learned how to kick the shit out of their kids.

But the classical education was reserved for the wealthy. People couldn't read Latin or tell you about Locke or do trig without a calculator any more than they can now. In fact, folks are more likely to be able to do it now than they were back then.

12/24/2008 11:40:17 AM

Hell, just look at how sophisticated popular TV shows are now compared to 20 years ago.

12/24/2008 12:19:21 PM

Quote :

"SOPHISTICATED POPULAR TV"

goddammit, dont make me side with hooksaw

12/24/2008 1:04:02 PM

I'm serious...compare, say, 24 to The A-Team or Knight Rider. Or Sesame Street to Leave it to the Big Red Hairy Beaver.

I'm not saying all modern shows are great and will be lauded in the future as ageless examples of outstanding television. Nonetheless, I think it's reasonable to say that the average TV show on today (actual produced content--reality swill excluded) requires more thought and attention than TV shows of yore.

12/24/2008 1:57:50 PM

Quote :

"What made the whole situation really awkward is that just a few days before in the Soap Box I had told EarthDogg to "eat a dick and learn how to read." Still, in spite of all that, I was able to get the job. "

Haha, that's a good ice breaker...

Quote :

" I have always credited this to the fact that I was the only one in the entire establishment who would talk to him when he went on a crazy libertarian rant."

Wow, he actually does that in person too?

12/24/2008 2:04:00 PM

Quote :

"I disagree that we are getting dumber. A hundred years ago, the average person was pretty uneducated. Sure, they got classical discipline in that they got the shit kicked out of them regularly and learned how to kick the shit out of their kids. But the classical education was reserved for the wealthy. People couldn't read Latin or tell you about Locke or do trig without a calculator any more than they can now. In fact, folks are more likely to be able to do it now than they were back then."

Pretty much accurate.

Society has generally been getting "smarter" overall if you look at test scores and performance tests. Communication though might be changing more rapidly, thanks to technology, than it has in the past, and people often confuse proficiency for a certain type of language with lack of intelligence. Any linguist will tell you language doesn't correlate to intelligence.

12/24/2008 2:07:30 PM

Exactly. Just take one look at Brendan Fraser in Encino Man...

12/24/2008 2:20:22 PM

Quote :

"(actual produced content--reality swill excluded)"

You can't just exclude the reality shows, since they make up an increasing large part of network TV. You are comparing 24 and the A-Team, why not compare 24 and MASH? Eh? You fail.

12/24/2008 2:32:29 PM

Quote :

"Wow, he actually does that in person too?"

Yes, whenever the opportunity arises.

Quote :

"Wow, he actually does that in person too?"

I hate to agree with Bridget, but I don't think we're getting dumber. I think we are getting more specialized, which gives off that appearance, though.

Years ago I remember someone -- nutsmackr, I think -- had a thread about dilettantes and pedants. Ah, yeah, here it is:

message_topic.aspx?topic=340357

Basically the gist is that a few hundred years ago you have guys like Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin, who speak multiple languages, invent plenty of useful and advanced items, and manage to create modern representative government in this country. They tracked the stars and wrote very witty, intelligent prose, and Christ only knows what else.

These guys seem pretty sharp, yeah?

Nowadays, people generally specialize in their work field and maybe some area of amateur interest. Our education, if we retained it all, would probably put us at or above the Jefferson level, but most of it is not useful to the task at hand so we shed it. This has been going on for quite a while -- hooksaw's generation, and that of his parents and quite possibly grandparents, were just as much a bunch of pedants as the rest of us.

The simple fact of the matter, as I talked about in nutsmackr's thread, is that there simply isn't much advantage to being a dilettante. We've known for quite a while that specialization helps everyone out. You may have a really broad education, giving you an intimate knowledge of how to mine iron ore, refine it, and shape it into nails; harvest wood and make it into planks; collect sand and blow it into glass; and so on, but odds are, you're just going to buy all that shit and pay someone else build your house. Unless you're Thomas Jefferson, in which case your well-educated ass has slaves do it for free.

12/24/2008 2:35:29 PM

Quote :

"You can't just exclude the reality shows, since they make up an increasing large part of network TV. You are comparing 24 and the A-Team, why not compare 24 and MASH? Eh? You fail."

I guess you missed the 'average TV show' part, though it seems to me that reality shows are largely in decline. Regardless, if I can't disgard 'reality' shows, then you can't cherry pick one of the best series ever produced and hold it up as an example that today's average show is less sophisticated than yesterday's.

12/24/2008 4:17:40 PM

Quote :

"I absolutely agree we (humans, Americans) are getting dumber by generation."

actually the opposite is true. people are getting smarter

Quote :

"A second factor is that we know IQ can differ radically without any genetic differences at all. And the most dramatic evidence of that is the Flynn effect. The Flynn effect is one of the freakier findings. The Flynn effect is the finding that people have been getting smarter. You are much smarter on average than your parents if--and the IQ tests hide that. Here is why they hide that. They hide that because they always make 100 the average. So, you come home and you say, "Dad, Dad, I just did an IQ test. I got 120." And your father says, "Good work, Son. I got 122 when I was your age," but what neither of you acknowledge is your test was much harder. As people got better, they had to make the test harder and harder. And this is plotted by the Flynn effect. [referring to a graph] One of these lines is American and one is Dutch. I don't know which is which but the gist of it is that somebody who would have--that if you in 1980 would take the 1950 test, your average person in 1980 would score 120 on the 1950 test. What this means is if you take your person who's average now and push him back through time twenty years, thirty years, he would do much better than average. Nobody knows why people are getting smarter and there's different theories of this. "

http://oyc.yale.edu/yale/psychology/introduction-to-psychology/content/transcripts/transcript13.html

12/24/2008 5:02:43 PM

I don't see why the Flynn effect is so shocking. I'd say the emphasis our society puts on education and early childhood development combined with the general access to information available in today's Digital age; I see it no surprise that today's youth are growing up more intelligent than their parents.

Not to mention an evolutionary pressure for woman to marry men who have intelligence thus often successful careers in contrast to just trying to marry the big tough guy who has no aspirations beyond his blue collar job.

12/24/2008 5:54:26 PM

IIRC intelligence is not a measure of *what* you know, but more of your *capacity* to learn.... memorizing a book of facts does not make you more intelligent.

or, at least, this is how i remember it from my psychology 101 or whatever it was i took, so many years ago.

12/25/2008 3:14:21 AM

You are correct. Intelligence is different from knowledge, although one affects the other to an extent (more intelligent people can more readily attain and store greater quantities of knowledge).

12/26/2008 12:06:23 AM

Just so we are clear -- this is the hooksaw generation, right?

1/4/2009 4:19:49 AM

Affirmative.

1/4/2009 4:23:08 AM

yeah, and what's even more entertaining is the fact that he completely failed to defend himself here...

1/4/2009 8:02:48 PM

actually, he did. at least in his own peculiar, warped-logic way....

since then, it's just been attempts to troll him back in here. I don't blame him for not taking the bait.

1/4/2009 11:49:58 PM

I have mixed feelings about hooksaw.

1/4/2009 11:57:19 PM

indeed.

and how does cddweller feel about this?

(you've told her, i assume)

1/5/2009 12:00:14 AM

Since our ages average to 61, she loves it.

1/5/2009 12:09:19 AM